By TIM ALEXANDER
Illinois Correspondent

ANKENY, Iowa — The U.S. Surface Transportation Board’s (STB) recent announcement that the board would hold a hearing on freight rail competitiveness and antitrust issues on May 3 was greeted with relief and anticipation by many in the agricultural community, including Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition (STC).

“We think it’s a positive development for the STB to review the issue of competition in the rail industry,” said Steenhoek, whose STC was established in 2007 to help position the soybean industry to benefit from a transportation system that offers effective, reliable and competitive service. The STC, which is comprised of nine state soybean boards, the American Soybean Association and the United Soybean Board, recently published an updated performance review of the nations’ Class I railroads— finding that shippers of agricultural products, and soybeans in particular, are often overcharged and must navigate a costly and burdensome appeal system.

“It is a fact that there are fewer railroads serving the U.S. economy. There are many areas of rural America that have access to only one railroad, and investigating the issue can only be helpful,” Steenhoek told Farm World. “There is wide agreement among ag shippers that there needs to be a more efficient, accessible process through the STB by which rail customers can seek rail rate relief if they feel they are being excessively charged due to the railroad’s dominance.”

Implementing meaningful rail competition reform and installing a new appeal process could get a boost from the STB’s scheduled hearing in May, Steenhoek said.

According to The Journal of Commerce, the STB will weigh its “competitive access rules” during the May 3 hearing, with discussions centered on requiring a “shipper’s originating long-haul railroad to quote rates where the shipment can hook up with a competitor, or mandating shared use of rail terminals where tracks of multiple carriers connect and requiring reciprocal switching arrangements that are now left to the railroads to negotiate if they wish.”

The STB will not, according to the Journal, “tackle a related issue of interchange commitments between railroads, contractual clauses built into the sale or lease of short lines or line segments that tie the owner’s or tenant’s freight traffic to the major railroad that first shed the track.”